Girls catch Lyft driver ‘secretly writing down’ their address in viral video

A TikTok user has urged people to be safe when taking cabs after claiming her driver wrote down the address of where she and her friends were staying.

The woman, called Timmie, shared a video to the platform captioned: “When the Lyft driver ‘secretly’ writes down your address as you get in a car with a group of girls.”

In the recording, shot at night, the man can be heard asking the group of friends a series of questions about their stay at a nearby AirBnb, including what time exactly they’d be leaving to catch a flight home.

“So how much longer are you guys gonna be here?” he can be heard asking, as well as: “How late’s your flight?”

Timmie revealed in a caption to the clip that she had lied about the details because she didn’t feel comfortable with his probing.

She claimed: “A lot of us are leaving tonight,” and added that they were on a “girls’ night” but had “left the boys at the place.”

In a follow-up clip she revealed that there were no boys staying at their accommodation, she just wanted to give the impression that she and her friends were not alone.

In the second video, Timmie reassured viewers that the group “made it home safe” before providing further context around their concerns.

She explained that the group were in Nashville for a bachelorette party and had hailed a Lyft (basically an alternative to Uber for readers who aren’t familiar with the service), to make their way to the centre of town.

“When we got in the Lyft, I noticed that [the driver] was writing down every single address that he was driving to on a notepad in the front seat, which I think is unnecessary. Why are you ever going to need my address in the future?” she said, adding: “That was the first red flag.”

“And when we were driving that’s when my friend made up that we were leaving that night, hoping that he wouldn’t want to come back, he would think we weren’t there,” she continued: “Then I said that we have guys back at the Airbnb.

“So that’s why we gave that information, both were lies.”

Timmie reassured viewers that she and her friends had got home safely its_timmie/TikTok

She went on: “And then he was, like, stopping the car in the middle of the road to show us his phone, and that’s when I was able to confirm on the front seat that he did have our address.”

She ended the clip by confirming that, once they’d exited the car, she called Lyft’s “critical” help line to explain what had happened.

“They were super helpful,” she said, adding: “He won’t be driving again.

“Everyone’s good, gotta be safe!”

Her two videos have racked up more than 9.8 million views in just two days as fellow TikTokers shared their admiration of Timmie’s “quick thinking”.

“Thanks for making the call to Lyft,” wrote one. “A lot of people miss that critical step and that could have been the end of it for another girl.”

“Thank you for making Nashville safer,” commented another, adding: “Also Lyft, good on you for moving quickly and getting off the road.”

Meanwhile, others warned that people should never use their real addresses when using ride-hailing apps or taxi services.

One wrote: “Ladies, please start getting dropped off at an address that’s within walking distance to your hotel or home. I never put my actual address on Uber.”

However, a number of other users suggested there was an innocent explanation for the driver’s decision to write down his customers’ coordinates.

“This could have been done for tax purposes,” one wrote. “They may need to record mileage and to do that they need to have a list to prove mileage to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service).”

Another backed up this theory, commenting: “I agree that they should not be writing down addresses, but I’ve had several drivers do so and tell me that it’s for fuel reimbursement/their taxes.”

If there is a logical reason for the man’s behaviour, we hope Lyft will take it on board and give him his wheels again.

But, as Timmie pointed out, we’ve all “gotta be safe”, and it’s better to be uber-cautious than sorry.